The President of the Implementation Committee presented a summary of the report of the thirty-first meeting of the Implementation Committee, and the accompanying draft decisions. He drew attention to the improvement in the rate of data reporting, and congratulated all the parties involved, the implementing agencies and Ozone and Multilateral Fund secretariats, for their efforts and commitment. He also observed, however, that the volume of data reported posed the Committee a problem in terms of the work needed to collate and analyse the information in good time before the meeting, together with reports from the Fund Secretariat and the implementing agencies. He suggested that appointing a Programme Officer responsible for monitoring compliance within the Secretariat, and ensuring that the last meeting of the Committee each year took place longer after the data-reporting deadline, would both help. The rate of reporting of base-year data, baseline data and the data needed to remove Parties from temporary classification as Article 5 Parties had all improved since last year. There still remained some Parties which had yet to report, and he called on them to do so as a matter of urgency, particularly with regard to baseline data, which was essential in assessing a Party's status of compliance with its obligations. The Committee had spent much of its time discussing the question of revisions to baseline data. While wishing to do its utmost to facilitate Parties' ability to comply with the Protocol, equally the Committee recognized that changing baseline data was a serious matter and could only be accepted if the Committee was absolutely confident of the justification.
Señaló que en la decisión XIV/8, "Examen de la utilización del Sistema Armonizado a nivel mundial para la clasificación y etiquetado de productos químicos que agotan la capa de ozono", se pidió a la Secretaría del Ozono que se pusiera en contacto con el Subcomité de Expertos del Consejo Económico y Social para aclarar si las sustancias agotadoras del ozono estaban incluidas en su programa de trabajo y, si no lo estaban, que evaluase la posibilidad y la viabilidad de incluir las sustancias agotadoras del ozono en su programa de trabajo, y presentase un informe ante la 23ª reunión del Grupo de Trabajo de composición abierta de las Partes, y explicó que por las fechas de celebración de las reuniones pertinentes la Secretaría no había podido asistir a la reunión del Subcomité de Expertos y presentar un informe al Grupo de Trabajo de composición abierta en su 23ª reunión, pero que asistiría a la siguiente reunión del Subcomité, que se celebraría en Ginebra en diciembre de 2003, y presentaría un informe ante la 24ª reunión del Grupo de Trabajo de composición abierta.